The problem
behind ALL our problems - from global
warming to nuclear proliferation, and all
those in-between - is our lack of a deeper
understanding of human nature and
behaviour and how they have shaped (and
are shaped by) society.

Natural
science and the technology that is based
on it have made such mind-boggling
progress in the past 300 years because our
models of physical reality have improved
so much. We still cannot grasp exactly
what that reality is (and probably never
will), but the models we now have are
brilliant.

The social
sciences, by comparison, are still in the
middle ages, their models of human and
social reality still hopelessly
inadequate.

This is
going to offend a lot of social
scientists, I know. But it's true - and
explains why our civilisation, in a
million different ways, is in such a
hopeless mess, and most importantly of
all, why we are plundering and spoiling
the very planet that our own children's
future depends upon.

The reason
for this lack of progress in the social
sciences lies in the fact that, like the
rest of us, social scientists themselves
are totally
immersed in, familiar with and DEPENDENT
upon the existing socio-economic order
(and environment), the irrationalities and
insanities of which they use their big
brains and prodigious intelligence to
rationalize and justify, thus blinding
themselves, and the rest of us, to them.

This serves
individual, short-term survival and
advantage in the "socio-economic
environment", which with the advent of
civilisation REPLACED the natural
environment, but not the long-
or even medium-term survival (let alone
advantage) of our species. But then, this
is not what Darwinian evolution adapted
human nature and behaviour to achieve.